s if to pass on some secret that he's only just learning for himself, Ian Shaw takes me out in his grey and green boat, which contrasts the colour of the ocean, and we clamber through the water towards a distant breaker. Beyond the sleet and mist, we can just about make out the whitewashed, octagonal lighthouse with its revolving green light, standing on a smooth rock-ledge dipping into the Atlantic.

Amid so much air and light, Peggy's Cove Lighthouse, with its flashing green eye, and red turret, protects fishermen and their vessels beyond this eastern point of Nova Scotia in Canada, from what dangers that it can. But only what it can. Since the Cove was settled by six families in 1811, the locals, who cleared and tilled the land, fished and sold their salted mackerel and herring, have said that you will never keep the sea and sky from the unfolding of its own plans. Perhaps their words were a portent. Shaw lifts his finger and points.

On September 2, 1998 Swissair Flight 111 left New York City's John F Kennedy International airport en route to Geneva. On board were 215 passengers and 14 crew, mainly American, French or Swiss, and six Britons. Shortly before 10.30pm Atlantic time, 13 kilometres out to sea from Peggy's Cove, beyond Jackrock Bank and out towards Pearl Island, the sky and the sea collided. Slowly, at first, the hum of uneven, sputtering engines, then, with seismic strength (a downward trajectory at over 400 miles an hour), the plane crashed into the ocean.

Towering waves, random squalls and the tumultuous weight of water have been a regular fact of life in this place, but this was something different. Peggy's Cove, a sheltered space, a sloshing sea-scape, would soon become the focal point of unwanted international attention. And the 60 souls who lived there - mostly deep-sea fishermen (and their families) resting between month-long trips to sea - would become the executors of an ersatz shrine. The impact of the crash caused buildings to shake and images on television sets to flicker as far as 15 kilometres away. When the muted sound echoed around Peggy's Cove, the community reacted as they have always done when disaster happens. They breathed deeply and heavily. Someone said prayers, others cursed at God. And the men took to the freezing waters in their overalls, in boats called Granite Prince, Reverence and Providence.

They had never seen anything like it. Hundreds of bodies - or what was left of bodies - littered the ocean. A fisherman saw a human heart float on the water. Wallets emptied by the force of the explosion, perfumed clothes stripped of their scent, hundreds of shoes, underwear, broken suitcases, eye-glasses, children's toys. Remnants of 229 people - they once had houses, friends, cars, jobs, lives - all this floating across the surface of the water, across the surface of the stoic fishermen's future

memories (at least one boat turned back: its crew was too appalled by the sight).

The previous evening Stephanie, 23, Shaw's beautiful daughter, had left her boyfriend in New York and headed to John F Kennedy airport. But she wasn't suposed to take this plane. She had stayed an extra night in Manhattan to get a direct flight to Geneva. In the early morning after the crash, Shaw woke his wife, Gudula, as the buzz of the television screen echoed the sound of the on-site reporter's words - ''there are no survivors.''

He asked if their daughter had called last night. No, she had not. ''Not to worry,'' said Gudula, ''she would be on another plane.'' The phone rang. It was Stephanie's boyfriend calling from New York. Tell me she got on another flight, he pleaded, tell me she flew to Zurich instead of Geneva. Shaw could not tell him anything. ''I was screaming inside, going insane.'' A brief call to the airline confirmed Stephanie had not gone to Zurich.

She had been on Swissair Flight 111, where the pilot had run through his emergency procedures. Isolate the smoke in the cock-pit, turn switches, check, request, check. Isolate, isolate. But the smoke kept coming. The final signal for crash mode seconds before impact, if the crew were alive, would be the code words ''Brace, brace.'' In the aftermath of the crash there was not one intact body so identification was

rendered virtually impossible. Everything had to be scooped up in nets. Debris filled bodybags. Seawater filled bodybags. But not one single body. Human remains were put in a refrigerator truck and taken to a makeshift morgue. Stephanie was identified by two centimetres of one wrist.

Ian Shaw was born in Perth but almost killed himself in Geneva. What kept him alive, what kept him from suicide, what drove him thousands of miles from Gudula - who sought solace from seemingly silly words of comfort - what made him leave her, physically, but not emotionally, and move to another continent, was the last six minutes of the flight. An intelligent, outgoing, successful businessman, he couldn't get the number out of his head. Six minutes. Six minutes of silence from the cockpit.

30,000 feet, 20,000 feet, 10,000 feet. The secret language of the pilots came into play. Pan, pan, pan. Then radio contact ceased. Emergency

services were on stand-by in Halifax. Flight attendants began to panic. The coastguard was alerted. The navy and the police. Priests were summoned. The son of boxing legend Jake la Motta was on board praying, by now, for his father's strength. Twin brothers, who entered the world together, would now leave together. Businessmen looked at each other. No secret deal could get them out of this. A world-famous Aids scientist clutched his wife. There were seven officials from UN-related agencies aboard the aircraft. A member of Saudi Arabia's Royal family. And there was Stephanie.

''We have to land immediately,'' screamed the last recorded message from the doomed aircraft to air traffic controllers. It was 10.24pm and the plane kept falling. Six minutes later, it crashed into the Atlantic. Stephanie had blue eyes. Shaw kept seeing them, wondering what they saw. He dreamed his baby alive. Aged five, ten, 15 and 20. Then she was gone. What happens when a 23-year-old body - full of love and memories and dreams - crashes into the sea at 400 miles an hour? It was a mathematical equation that he could not solve.

Shaw's Landing sits in the beautiful

village of West Dover, minutes from Peggy's Cove. From the wooden decks of this small restaurant, which doubles as the local post office, you can order succulent lobster, for which the area is noted, and fish and scallops and salmon. The homemade Nova Scotia fries are a must. In two years the restaurant has built a reputation as one of the area's most interesting stopovers for

visitor's to Peggy's Cove. Ian Shaw is wearing a white apron, a pair of cotton shorts and a dark blue rugby shirt. He is standing over a large

frying pan cooking haddock.

In his former life, Shaw - whose brother is Sir Jack, the governor of the Bank of Scotland - was a powerful and wealthy businessman. A home in Geneva and a summer house in France, Shaw and his family were accustomed to a life of

privelege. Stephanie was a championship show- jumper and swimmer, outgoing, popular articulate and well-educated. She wanted to be like her older brother, Olivier (''he was shattered by her death'') and was cherished by her father and mother. ''When I took her to the airport, to fly to New York,'' says Shaw, almost inaudibly, ''I had never seen her so full of sunshine. She looked as if she belonged to the sun. Off she went. She was beautiful.''

That was the end of a lot of happiness. ''Stephanie was born happy,'' he continues. ''Probably always was happy. She was popular in the best possible sense. Swissair destroyed her. They destroyed 229 people and then everyone who was left.''

When their daughter died, Shaw and Gudula, who have been married for over 30 years, made a promise to each other. They would stay in Geneva and stop their imaginations of what happened to their daughter at the end of her life, minutes before impact. They promised each other they would forget it. Unable to rescue himself from the nightmare vision before him - was she unconscious, or did she suffer terribly and alone? - Shaw broke the promise. ''I proposed something while Gudula kept the bargain and I didn't.'' Gudula preserved Stephanie at the airport. Shaw, broken, twisted, a wreck,

followed her in to the sea. As a result Shaw gave up the life he once had, gave up his wife because they could no longer coexist together.

It was during one of his return trips to Nova Scotia that he spotted a run-down diner - Louise's Take Out - which he decided to buy and turn into a living monument for his daughter. That was two years ago. He has lived here since. Later in the afternoon, out in the water where he is learning to navigate the channels and banks around St Margaret's Bay - slowly, carefully, constantly curious of the pitfalls of what lies ahead - he tells me about his new life.

''It was impossible to stop thinking about Stephanie's fate,'' he sighs. ''It was a controlling thing for me, but I was in no situation to control. I drank two bottles of whisky a day. I had to have oblivion. I couldn't face it. Gudula could barely face me anymore. I was so caught up in my own grief that I forgot hers. I finally went to seek some medical advice and I would go twice a week just for comfort. I was in great distress. I couldn't even drive, because I was always drinking. Everytime I went to see this person I would go by train. Everytime I went to the train station I wanted to jump in front of the train. So I wanted to kill myself at least twice a week going and twice a week coming back.''

At 63, Shaw is a small man, with grey hair, grey beard, grey complexion and unbearably sad eyes. When he laughs the weight of water around him lifts. When he sheds a tear - which he does occasionally as we speak - the blackest storm clouds descend. It is horrible and frightening. He feels her presence, like an amputated arm. How can you tell a truly sad story? You can feel it in your stomach.

The boat cuts through the small breakers. A blue heron sits on a rock. We prowl round the islands. Thousands of men have drowned in the waters of the Atlantic on the eastern seaboard. In years gone by shipwrecks occurred because of errors in navigation. Shaw is trying to keep himself from the rocks. ''I couldn't understand how my wife could leave Stephanie at that point in her life,'' he says. ''I couldn't do it and it tore me apart. I couldn't sleep, and I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to but, ultimately, I couldn't.''

A few days after the crash he arrived at Peggy's Cove amid the throng of media, volunteers and victims' families. However painful, he knew he had to look. Closer and closer. The lighthouse, the sky, the sea, the shore, the smell of diesel, the people, the boats that once hauled haddock, tuna and swordfish, but now hauled scraps of human remains. Other people's lives playing out before him. Nothing would ever be the same again. He knew this much, at least. He returned home to more thoughts of suicide. How did he go on? How did he get through it?

In Geneva, his perfectly tailored suits, boxes of shoes and even Gudula, began to lose all meaning. He didn't hate his wife. But he had to save her from himself. And no, he hasn't left her. He just lives in a different place from her. ''She is my best friend,'' he says, and the conviction is palpable. ''I love her, so much. We talk every day as we have done for the last two years since I came here. She comes here maybe twice a year. But it's impossible to be together just now. But we will be together again.

''We are very, very good friends and have been for most of 30 years. We are lucky to have each other, although the dynamics are unusual. It's not always easy. Previously I had a vast social circle and I was always surrounded by society people. I had an enormous number of friends and acquaintances. There was not a lot of being alone.

''But I've always treasured time with myself, as I do now. I was taught to be interested in life. I am a Scot, that's what we're taught. Always intensely inquisitive of things beyond my own perception. It is possible to fill large areas of my life with wanderings through wonderings. Although I don't spend a lot of time with them because, like everyone else, I don't look after time as well as I should, I've learned that my friends here are closer than the friends I had before.''

Seven days a week he rises at dawn, turns up the volume on his favoured opera music and prepares breakfast, lunch and dinner. In his other life he ate sushi wrapped in gold leaf. He dined in the finest restaurants. Now he prepares fresh fish from the banks around St Margaret's Cove, Mahone's Cove and Peggy's Cove. Dollar meals and more. Nothing extravagant. Lobster rolls and chips. Seafood casserole. Eggs and bacon. His story could almost be biblical. A stranger arrives. He feeds the people fish and bread. And he preaches redemption.

There are no curtains or blinds around the windows in his bedroom. Shaw lets the light in, whether dark or bright. He lets Stephanie in through the windows and dreams her alive, somewhere else, somewhere safe. Her cat, Mimi, is his constant companion. He brought her over after his daughter died and she sleeps by his bed. Everything that is now important to Ian Shaw has happened after Stephanie died. ''It was important for me to break free. Everyone was uneasy, except Gudula. She knew what was going on. Everyone thought I was going round the bend. Because they couldn't understand. How could I leave these wardrobes full of the finest clothes? My houses. All this stuff. The paintings, everything. Gudula understood.''

Although most of Stephanie's body disintegrated, a few parts were found and were scattered near the crash site on the first anniversary of the disaster. Before her anniversary he visited Lake Geneva, where Stephanie used to windsurf, with Olivier and Gudula. They collected some stones and when the three of them travelled to Nova Scotia, they put them in an

urn which was supposed to be filled with Stephanie's ashes. They took a boat out to the point of impact. They put the stones in the urn and cast it on the water. The boat pulled away. ''The sun came right down on the urn,'' he recalls, ''and made a five-point star and it shone for maybe three minutes and then it sank. That was the beginning of me being okay again.''

It was an epiphany of sorts. ''The boat moves through the water, the water parts and comes either side of the boat and then it meets again behind the boat. Then it goes away and there's no memory of the moment when the boat started moving through the water. That's what all our lives are about. We are all just elements of energy and we have a point of contact, which is a forward point, then it's a sideways point, then it's the wash. It's over. People I love, people I don't love. People I should respect, or shouldn't respect. People who believe they are transforming the world, they are all the same. It is very difficult to accept it in terms of a 24-year-old, brilliant, adorable girl. But you have to accept it's all transient anyway.''

To the best of guesses, the Swissair plane crashed when its electronics were short-circuited by the faulty wiring of the in-flight entertainment. The final report into the tragedy has yet to be completed. Several days ago investigators released new safety recommendations aimed at reducing onboard fires in aircraft. The Canadian Transport Safety Board wants stricter flammability standards for materials used in

aircraft construction, more stringent tests on electrical wires and a new evaluation of systems such as air conditioning which could help feed oxygen to onboard fires.

Canada's safety board is testing 20 burnt wires it believes were damaged by electrical arcs between wires on the doomed flight. It has found evidence that fire developed in the ceiling near the cockpit, but hasn't discovered the cause. The painstaking investigation has cost more than (pounds) 25 million and lifted more than two million pieces of the wreckage from the ocean floor.

''Swissair have retreated into the castle. That is corporate life,'' says Shaw. ''They were, in the first weeks, phenomenally kind but then the corporate structure took over. A corporate entity has no heart. It had no brain. It has no face. We received a derisory sum of money, which I cannot disclose, on the basis that Stephanie was dependent on us, financially, not the other way round.''

When Lloyd's, the London insurer, planned to send a salvage team down to the plane's wreckage to remove millions of pounds' worth of diamonds and rubies, from the plane's hull, Shaw was outraged, calling the move a

''desecration''. ''We were told that the point of impact was being marked on all maritime maps and it would be inviolate. Surely the Canadian government was not selling off this hallowed ground to insurers?'' Lloyd's announced it was backing down.

Shaw also organised for a group of children from Peggy's Cove to travel to Switzerland to stay with some families of the dead. A Canadian television company filmed the event and during my visit Shaw invites me to watch it. Later, drained and emotional, he tells me he has never watched it all the way through. ''We live in a society that is untruthful about death. There isn't any real understanding about premature death intervening. In school there are the facts of life, or of sex. No one teaches the facts of death. It's always very dark, sinister and brooding. But I am comforted by the knowledge that death is there and I don't need a lot of mystic poetry-making to make it more acceptable. You don't have the choice of acceptance. It is there, it happens. You let it be part of you.

''I think it would be more difficult to deal with if it involved aggression. In Stephanie's case there was no aggression, at least not overtly. If there was evil intent then the picture changes and you have to deal with that horrible knowledge. We were spared this. Yet it doesn't stop me from missing her.''

The Split Boulder Monument, at Whalesback, rests about a mile from the Cove. We head there and I ask if his decision to come here, in the shadow of his daughter's grave, was courageous. He looks out to the water, scanning the horizon, for a speck on which to build hope. ''It was never a question of courage. For someone to do it without these circumstances being involved, is courageous. I consider it courageous of my wife to have let me have access to this space. But I wasn't being courageous.

''Without the slightest doubt this life is better, worthier than it was before, although I think that I am lonelier than I have ever been. But it's different here. Here I don't care about things . I just don't care. I am being. I am not having. The bonus here is that this is such a frugal community, they don't have a lot, but they are. They intensely are. They are intense in their being. That's all we have. Between the cradle and the grave, that's all we have.

''A lot of people say that it's wonderful that I came here to be close to my daughter. Well, they are wrong. I am denied proximity of any nature, I have been denied being close to my daughter ever again. You are denied proximity when death happens. Yes, there is a geographical point out there but it's not enough. So what I have done is learn to use an extra lung.''

Ian Shaw was not always old. Stephanie was blonde and beautiful. She made him young. He loved her. And then she died. ''You have to breathe with something like this. You go with it. You don't go down. You can't. People don't realise how simple life is. I never did until Stephanie died. Isn't that sad?'' n

Swissair Flight 111: journey to disaster

The final journey of Swissair Flight 111 began smoothly enough. After passing final inspection at John F Kennedy airport, New York, it took off at 8.18pm. It travelled east towards the Atlantic on a flight path that would take it over Nova Scotia, flying at an altitude of 9,900m. 56 minutes into the flight came the first sign of trouble. According to edited transcripts of the conversation from one of the pilots, a voice said ''We have smoke in the cockpit.'' The air traffic control tower which was responsible for the region, suggested Boston as an emergency landing point. Then they suggested Halifax, which was closer. ''Affirmative,'' came the reply.

Apparently having donned smoke masks and goggles, the captain and co-pilot began bringing the plane to an altitude under 3,000m. ''We must dump some fuel,'' they told the tower. Twice they were given permission to dump and were cleared to land.

Having decided to dump fuel and reduce altitude, the plane, which was, at one point within 46 km of Halifax airport, turned away from the city, flying in a U-pattern over

St Margaret's Bay. Officials later said there were two good reasons for that decision: emergency landings are safer without a heavy load of fuel and, with the fuel, the aircraft may have been too heavy to land without overshooting.

A final exchange with the control tower began at about 10.24pm, and the aircraft began dumping fuel. At this time the cockpit issued its final message: ''We are declaring an emergency. We are starting to vent now. We have to land immediately." Nothing else was heard. Six minutes later the aircraft crashed into the sea.

Gudula Shaw: My life without Stephanie

When Stephanie died, myself and Ian reacted very differently,

although I don't necessarily think I was more in control than Ian was. For me it didn't make sense to move to Nova Scotia. First of all my daughter lived in Geneva and she had never been there or seen it, so it was pointless for me to move there. But it was a different matter for Ian. Being Scottish, it's similair to his culture, his language and he feels at ease there.

''I wasn't angry when he decided to leave and I understood why he was doing it. If he'd said he was moving away and not asked me to go with him, I would have felt hurt. But he did ask. It was me that couldn't follow him. The change was too radical. I would be too far away from my friends and my family, who were great support for me. While the people in Nova Scotia are very kind and warm hearted, for me it would have been like moving to the wilderness.

''What I've learned is that when you live together, you take each other for granted. You expect them to be there, and to listen to you and when this changes you learn to appreciate different aspects of the relationship. All of a sudden it becomes a gift when the phone rings. You appreciate the small things, the little exchanges.

''Although he is away it doesn't stop me from being glad he is coping well there, making a living and a life. He is very active now, which he no longer

was in Geneva. And he is so much happier. While it's difficult not seeing each other, I still feel very close to him and he feels close to me. We exchange our daily lives, speaking on the phone everyday and e-mails. He's not out of

my mind.

''I can't say I am really profoundly angry with Swissair. One thing is for sure - they never did it on purpose. It really was an unfortunate accident that, over the years, I've learned to come to terms with. When it happened the tidal wave of emotion almost swallowed me, but now I have learned to deal with it. I am more settled. I still miss Stephanie so much. Her easy going manner, and her smile. She never gave us any problems.